How to Build Embedded Links

Written by Mark Walters

All ecommerce businesses employ embedded links to improve their Page Rank, and to lead customers from one area of the website to the next. One of the most common is ‘Click Here’. These lead to the website’s most important pages, buy now pages, and squeeze pages. Most webmasters discount these links as unimportant.

Unfortunately, they can throw a website’s SEO campaign out of whack. Think of it, the ecommerce site invests months of work, and countless dollars in graphics, images, and content to build the perfect sale’s tool. Then, without thinking, they add 100 ‘Click Here’ links.

Focus on Search Engines

When the search engine robots travel to the site to ‘spider’ the content and rank the website, ‘Click Here’ becomes one of the dominant keyword phrases. It is fun to go to Google and type in the keyword phrases ‘click here’ to see what happens. No one starts out to become #1 for the keyword phrase, ‘click here.’

Tagging the Bottom of the Content

Another mistake is adding a list of links at the bottom. Google gives very little weight to links at the bottom of a page. So, adding, ‘cheap digital camera’ at the bottom of the page will not attract search engine robots as well as using the same keyword phrase buried inside content. One way to sidestep these two problems is to use a short comment:

Click here to see our selection of cheap digital cameras including the Cabaret 300.

The above example asks for the sale, tells users exactly what will be on the next page, and employs an embedded link, everything needed to satisfy both human visitors and search engine robots.

External Links

This is also true of external links from partners, press releases, articles and shared content links. The bottom of the article or press release includes a short tag. That tag should embed the link in a keyword phrase, and it should be inside the link, not at the end. Many Do-It-Yourself Internet Marketers add the URL, believing users will remember it - they won’t. So, the benefit of an ‘executive level’ link is lost, because the URL is written out and is not remembered by visitors.

This is a trick, because many of the article directories will not let users add embedded links at the end. And, if they do, it limits the number of publishers who will list the article - because it might throw their own Internet Marketing Campaign out of balance.

Images

Despite the fact that all self-help sites teach Internet Marketers to add keyword phrase tags to the image, most do not. Adding alt tags to an image can make a vast difference to a website’s rank, especially an ecommerce shopping market.

A single shopping cart can have 1000 images. Each of them can be an ‘embedded link’ joining the image to a ‘more information’ page. This page may have more information on the product, or a group of products, directions on how to use an item, or even information about the product’s company.

The trick is to make sure that the keyword phrases in the meta information on the first page matches the keyword phrases used in the image - and, the keyword phrases on the new page. This will create a top level link exchange. It is important to remember that an inbound link does not need to generate ‘off’ the website.

Keyword success is a never ending battle. It can make the difference between profit and loss, and should be the first consideration for an ecommerce business.